Transparent conductors are widely used in many applications, such as touch panel displays, organic LED lighting, organic photovoltaic devices and dye-sensitized solar cells. Today, the most commonly used transparent conductors are transparent conducting oxides, such as indium-tin oxide (ITO). Because of the fragility and lack of flexibility of ITO films, as well as the limited supply of indium and high cost of vacuum processing employed to make the ITO films, alternatives are being actively sought. Such alternatives include silver nanowires, metal mesh, carbon nanotubes, graphene and conductive polymers.
Among the ITO alternatives, carbon nanotube technology requires the separating of metallic tubes from semiconducting tubes; graphene is very difficult to synthesize and usually offers low transparency; and conductive polymers exhibit high sheet resistance. Given the problems with other alternatives, silver nanowire technology may be the most promising approach due to its relatively high conductivity, high transparency, and solution processability. However, current silver nanowire technology suffers from instability in terms of poor film robustness and/or poor adhesion. New formulations to improve the adhesion of silver nanowire on substrates, without trade off of the conductivity and transparency, are urgently needed.